Sumit Singhal Sumit Singhal loves modern architecture. He comes from a family of builders who have built more than 20 projects in the last ten years near Delhi in India. He has recently started writing about the architectural projects that catch his imagination.
Elephant House in Copenhagen, Denmark by Foster + Partners
June 27th, 2013 by Sumit Singhal
Article source: Foster + Partners
Set within a historic royal park, adjacent to the Frederiksberg Palace, Copenhagen Zoo is among the oldest zoos in Europe and one of Denmark’s most popular cultural institutions, with 1.2 million visitors a year. Among the Zoo’s most visited inhabitants are the Indian elephants. The starting point for the design of this new Elephant House was to provide these magnificent animals with a healthy, stimulating environment and in the process to create easily accessible spaces from which visitors can see and enjoy them.
Foster + Partners Team: Norman Foster, Spencer de Grey, Armstrong Yakubu, Narinder Sagoo, John Jennings, Damian Timlin, Sebastian Busse, Niraj Doshi, Jason Dougherty, Nike Himmels, Xavier De Kestelier, Neryhs Phillips Kwak, Brady Peters, Pia Salin, Charbel Tannous, Alia Tohala
Extensive research into elephants’ social patterns provided design cues. The tendency for bull elephants in the wild to roam away from the herd suggested a plan organised around two separate enclosures. These enclosures are dug into the sloping site, both to minimise the building’s physical impact in the landscape and to optimise its passive thermal performance accessible spaces from which visitors can see and enjoy them.
Covered with glazed domes, the spaces maintain a strong visual connection with the sky and changing patterns of daylight. From the entrance square visitors enter the foyer and are lead by ramps down into an educational space, with views into the enclosures along the way. At the end of this route, broad public terraces offer splendid views across the herd paddock. Barriers between the animals and visitors are discreet, and the paddock walls are concealed in a linear pool so that the visitor encounters the elephants as another ‘surprise’ in the landscape of the park.
Significantly, the building sets new zoological standards in terms of the elephants’ physical well-being. The main enclosure enables the six cows and calves to congregate and sleep together, as they would in the wild, while the floors are heated to keep them dry and thus maintain the health of the animals’ feet. Other aspects of the design resulted from research into the elephants’ natural habitat. The paddocks recreate a section of dry riverbed as found at the edge of the rainforest – a favourite haunt of Asian elephants. With its mud holes, pools and shading objects, it is a place where the animals are able to play and interact freely.
Copenhagen Zoo’s Asian elephants are the best breeding group in Europe. In the last 30 years 9 elephants have been born in Copenhagen which places the zoo as the third most successful in the world
Copenhagen Zoo is the most visited cultural institution in Denmark, attracting over 1.2 million visitors a year and is set within an historic royal park, adjacent to the Fredriksberg Palace
The internal environment is maintained at a comfortable temperature (16 – 22 deg. C). There is a mist system installed to control humidity levels and to prevent the elephants’ skin becoming too dr
The floor in the main herd stable is covered in sand (500mm deep). The sand is more comfortable to sleep on as it moulds to the shape of the body, drains away urine and keeps the elephants’ feet dry and free from infections
The stable areas where the elephants are washed and trained have concrete floors with under floor heating to keep them dry and warm
An adult male elephant weighs 5.5T and can exert a 15T horizontal load on a wall
All the walls which can be reached by an elephant are made of reinforced concrete 300mm thick
The precast wall panels in the stables have a textured surface (exposed aggregate) so that the elephants can rub/exfoliate their skin
The reach of an elephant’s trunk is 2.5m horizontally and 6m vertically so any services and light fittings are out of reach or protected with steel cover plates as elephants are very inquisitive
The ‘fritting’ pattern on the glazed roof canopies was created by sampling four species of tree. A computer script was written to rotate, scale and randomly populate the roof, so that no two ‘leaves’ are the same. The overlapping pattern provides naturalistic dappled light
The external elephant landscape is made of sand and includes a 3m deep and 60m long lake
The landscape, designed by Stig L Andersson, reinforces the relationship between the zoo and the adjacent royal park and provides the public with accessible viewing and educational facilities
The elephant areas are designed so that they are never completely surrounded by people to minimise stress for animals
New standards have been set in terms of the elephants’ well-being
The main herd enclosure will, for the first time, enable elephants in captivity to spend the night together, as they would in the wild
This entry was posted
on Thursday, June 27th, 2013 at 4:30 am.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
email
Facebook
Twitter
RSS Feed
